I started Invent Electronics during my second year in college because as an Electrical Engineering student and electronics hobbyist, I found it extremely difficult to get electronic components to buy.

Students in my faculty were facing similar problems so I decided I’ll start importing electronic components to sell.

This is an example of an unpleasant experience which I turned into a business opportunity.

Of course, some of the problems and solutions you come up with may be beyond your reach or may not be feasible from a business point of view, but you’ll definitely find something you can do which people will be willing to pay for.

Step 2
Create An Identity and an Online Presence For Your Business

So you got that killer idea that people are willing to pay for. Great. But you need to be able to tell the world that you exist.

People who hear about your product or service need to be able to check you out and get more info if necessary.

Most probably they are going to google your product and are expecting to find something about you.

If you are now starting out, there are a number of things you have to do to get your product or service online – and, they are all free.

Here are just three of them.

1.Create social media pages for your business

Create a Facebook page and a Twitter account for your business. Canva.com lets you create all sort of designs, from logos, Facebook headers, Twitter headers for free without the need to hire a graphic designer.

If you are selling a product, you can use a phone with a good camera to take a good picture of your product for your cover photo.

There are many online services which you can use to design a good looking logo for free. You don’t need to hire a graphic designer to do this.

Again, Canva.com is a great tool to use and is my preferred choice.At least not now

2.Add your business to online business directories.

Online business directories like Ghanayello give you the opportunity to create a short professional profile about your business.

You can add your contact numbers, link to your social media pages or website and even get initial customers to leave reviews.

When someone Googles a service similar to what you provide, there is a pretty good chance they’ll find you.

Step 3
Promote your Business

Now that you’ve figured out what you want to do and you have an online presence, it’s time to let people know about your business.

At this point, you are probably thinking about money for advertisement but the good news is that you don’t need money to advertise your business.

If your business involves you selling product, you can advertise for free on sites like Tonaton and Olx. For businesses which provide a specific service, you can advertise on sites like 15ghana.com and Freelancer.

If you are offering your service to students, chances are most of your potential customers are active on social media.

Your social media platforms like Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are great avenues to advertise your product or service.

You can even create a broadcast list, but first get permission from your contacts before adding them to your broadcast list.

You should be careful not to spam your contacts or groups. People hate spam and you could end up doing your business more harm than good.

Step 4
Learn, Learn, Learn

So you’ve gone through Steps 1 to 3 and you’ve probably made one or two sales and are very excited. But it doesn’t end there. There is a whole lot which goes into running a business.

Unless you want your business to collapse, you’ll have to soon start learning stuff like how to reach potential customers, building good business relationships, keeping business records, pricing your product and services, branding, marketing, accounting, managing stock and a whole lot of business stuff that they won’t teach you in class.

Once again, you don’t necessarily need to go to school or pay to learn any of these. All you need is your phone or PC and the internet.

There are a lot of sites which offer online courses in almost anything you want to learn for free. Here is a list of 25 free online learning sites you can check out. I have personally taken about a dozen courses from Coursera alone.

Also there are a lot of business websites where top entrepreneurs share very insightful content on different business subjects. I have found Entrepreneur, Inc and GrowthHackers to be invaluable resources in my entrepreneurial journey.

Final Thoughts

Building a business may be difficult but is definitely worth all the time and sweat. You don’t need a truckload of cash to start your own business. There are online which can help you launch your business with very little money and many of them are free to use.

So get up now and launch your business.

If you liked this post, please consider leaving a comment below and sharing it with your friends. Also don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

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Ebenezer

This is very educative. I’ve learned a lot in just 4 mins of reading. Thanks a lot

I do agree with all the ideas you have presented in your post. They’re very convincing and will definitely work. Still, the posts are too short for starters. Could you please extend them a bit from next time? Thanks for the post.

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Great tips Isaac! Anyone can launch their own business even without the money, especially if your business would be something to do about freelancing. It could be freelance graphic design services, writing, web development, etc.